transvivi

A transparent build with a metaphor inside it.Trans is across or beyond, vivi is to live, and living across something is coming out the far side of it still alive. Like every Esperanto compound it puts the main root last, so the word names a kind of living. Transitive, so the thing you come through takes the accusative: ili transvivis la militon.

The fence with postvivi, which you met at rank 1868. The two overlap heavily and either will be understood, but the dictionary distinction is worth keeping because it is genuinely useful. Postvivi is to live after: you outlive a person or a thing, and the object is usually the one you have outlasted. Ŝi postvivis sian edzon is she outlived her husband. Transvivi is to live through: the object is an event, an ordeal or a danger, and what you have done is get from one side of it to the other. Ŝi transvivis la militon is she came through the war. An obituary wants postvivi; a shipwreck story wants transvivi.

Which is why this page is glossed the way it is. The plain English word for both is survive, and postvivi already carries it in this course. Rather than give two words the same answer, transvivi is glossed by what actually separates it: living through, coming through. When you want the ordinary English survive and the object is an event, this is the verb.

The family. Transvivanto is a survivor, though postvivanto is commoner in that role. Travivi is the close neighbour and means to live through in the sense of experiencing rather than enduring, so mi travivis strangan tagon is I had a strange day, with no suggestion that you nearly did not. And transvivo is survival as a noun.